Smoke Exposure Study Linked To Big Tobacco

May 27, 2000

Re the letter by Rick Berman of the American Beverage Institute ("Secondhand smoke," May 5): While Mr. Berman touts the results of an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study that minimizes the significance of on-the-job exposure to secondhand smoke for bartenders, waiters and waitresses, he omits some important details. The major author of the study cited by Mr. Berman is Roger Jenkins, a chemist with the lab. In September 1997, Mr. Jenkins testified on behalf of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Miami in the class-action lawsuit brought by nonsmoking flight attendants against the tobacco companies. The judge in that case barred him from testifying about his secondhand smoke studies because RJ Reynolds' assistance with field work and lab analysis made the research suspect.

In 1995, Mr. Jenkins received funding from a tobacco industry-funded organization, the Center for Indoor Air Research. The authors of a 1996 study on center-funded projects noted that Mr. Jenkins "stated that CIAR had approached him with a proposal for his project, and that he and his colleagues had developed the study methodology with input from CIAR, RJ Reynolds and Bellomy Research [a marketing research firm]." The authors cite CIAR tax records, which show that Oak Ridge National Laboratory received $797,892 in 1993 for Jenkins to conduct a study on human exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.

It is no surprise that Jenkins' work trivializes the importance of workers' exposure to secondhand smoke. It is also no surprise that a tobacco industry ally such as Mr. Berman did not reveal to the Sun-Sentinel's readers the tobacco industry's role in the ORNL study.